FILSAFAT KORUPSI - Direktori File UPI

same kind of administrative and procedural reforms, and were also surveyed jointly with 100
lawyers and 200 firms all bringing cases before these same courts. In Venezuela, 10 judges in
pilot courts were surveyed jointly with 160 lawyers and 300 firms all bringing cases before
the surveyed courts. In both these cases, Ecuador and Venezuela, surveys of judges and
attorneys were conducted four years before and three years after the implementation of
reforms.
The survey measures the frequency of the types of corruption mentioned above in Table 1
according to the separate perception of judges, attorneys, and litigant firms in the most
common types of commercial cases: bankruptcy, debt collection, and breach of business
contracts.
It is noteworthy that, within each country and during the period under consideration, the
sample of courts did not experience significant changes in backlogs and our analysis controls
for per capita budgetary allocations. All these courts were under the same judge during the
period under consideration: 1990-99. At the same time, the courts sampled here showed no
changes in the number and functional structure of their personnel during the period 1990-98
in Argentina, 1990-99 in Ecuador, and the period 1990-98 in Venezuela.
As part of these reforms, most administrative tasks were taken away from each court and
allocated to an Administrative Support Office (ASO) shared by the pilot courts in each
country. These ASO took away all budget and service–related money transactions from court
personnel. At the same time, legal procedures were streamlined and orally-based; external
control and disciplinary measures and inspections were for the first time introduced through
regional judicial councils.
A jurimetric study of corruption within the judiciary can provide a good ground for testing the
five hypotheses stated above. The period under consideration has been divided into two sub-
periods separated by the enactment of a landmark administrative and procedural pilot reforms
of the judiciaries in 1994-95 in Argentina and Venezuela and in 1992-94 in Ecuador. The first
sub period running between 1990 and 1994 in Argentina and Venezuela, occurs under an
older and more complex procedural civil code and with a complete absence of administrative
written guidelines and supervision. This first period in the three countries under consideration
is characterized by highly decentralized administrative practices with the handling of all
procedures in the hands of each court (and sometimes just in the hands of a law clerk with
complete and unchecked administrative and adjudicational discretion). During the first sub
period before reforms were implemented, the judge and/or law clerk had extreme discretion
over all administrative functions (operational budget, strategic planning, personnel
management, supply requests, simple and complex archival tasks, and the handling of court
fees) and were not subject to or expected any outside inspections. This initial period is also
An Economic and Jurimetric Analysis of Official Corruption in the Courts
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characterized by the relative lack of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms applied to
commercial cases in both countries.
In contrast, during the period 1995-99 we observe that these pilot courts were all subject to
new rules and to structural changes brought by a new and a much more simplified oral-based
procedural code, coupled with a more centralized management of the court system where a
specialized type of "court managers" in charge of personnel and budget-related administrative
duties were allowed to work within Administrative Support Offices (ASOs) shared by 5 to 10
courts (the number of courts sharing these services depends on the subject matter and country
involved). Additionally, computer-based online corruption reporting systems were first
introduced, thus generating distrust between potentially corrupt court personnel and those
offering bribes. In this context, whistleblowers are for the first time protected by law and
publicly portrayed as “model citizens” before the press.
1
Therefore, this new period brought an enhanced predictability and transparency before the
public in the performance and supervision of administrative functions. Moreover, the internal
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